If you’ve ever wondered why your Facebook app looks a little different from your friend’s, you’ve likely learned that Facebook tests features in a very unique, targeted way.

Airship wants to let its customers start testing features the same way that companies like Facebook and Dropbox do without all the added complications and resources. The startup is launching out of Y Combinator’s latest class with a product that integrates directly into customer codebases and that lets engineers easily flag features to roll out to targeted groups of users.

While there is certainly no shortage of A/B testing tools available for developers, most are focused on content tweaks, while Airship’s product flagging framework can ultimately give end users dramatically different feature experiences, which can give smaller startups much deeper insights into how customers interact with product changes.

While it may just seem like another way to press ship, rolling out features this way can affect the product direction at companies by letting them see when a feature is received negatively by a small group of users. The startup points to botched redesign rollouts from companies like Snap and Digg, as evidence that feature launches should be carefully orchestrated and delivered in a more targeted capacity.

The company has integrated their product with Segment so that users can use their existing analytics platform to tell them about how their features are being received. As the company moves forward, they’re hoping to continue building out more integrations as well as control mechanisms.

For small teams pricing packages start at $80 per month (or $64 when billed annually) and move up based on how custom features are being tested and how many monthly active users the team has. There’s a 14 day free trial for users interested in taking it for a whirl first.

All three of those sentences would have seemed nearly unimaginable five years ago. What the hell is going on? Ev Williams says, of the growth of social media: “We laid down fundamental architectures that had assumptions that didn’t account for bad behavior.” What changed? And perhaps the most important question is: have people always been this awful, or have social networks actually made us collectively worse?

I have two somewhat related theories. Let me explain.

The Uncanny Social Valley Theory

“Social media is poison,” a close friend of mine said to me a couple of years ago, and since then more and more of my acquaintances seem to have come around to her point of view, and are abandoning or greatly reducing their time spent on Facebook and/or Twitter.

Why is it poison? Because this technology meant to provoke human connection actually dehumanizes. Not always, of course; not consistently. It remains a wonderful way to keep in contact with distant friends, and to enhance your relationship and understanding of those you regularly see in the flesh. What’s more, there are some people with whom you just ‘click’ online, and real friendships grow. There are people I’ve never met who I’d unhesitatingly trust with the keys to my car and home, because of our interactions on various social networks.

And yet — having stipulated all the good things — a lot of online interactions can and do reduce other people to awful caricatures of themselves. In person we tend to manage a kind of mammalian empathy, a baseline understanding that we’re all just a bunch of overgrown apes with hyperactive amygdalas trying to figure things out as best we can, and that relatively few of us are evil stereotypes. (Though see below.) Online, though, all we see are a few projections of those mammal brains, generally in the form of hastily constructed, low-context text and images … as mediated and amplified by the outrage machines, those timeline algorithms which think that “engagement” is the highest goal to which one can possibly aspire online.

I am reminded of the concept of the Uncanny Valley: “humanoid objects which appear almost, but not exactly, like real human beings elicit uncanny, or strangely familiar, feelings of eeriness and revulsion in observers.” Sometimes you ‘click’ with people online such that they’re fully human to you, even if you’ve never met. Sometimes you see them fairly often in real life, so their online projections are just a new dimension to their existing humanity. But a lot of the time, all you get of them is that projection … which falls squarely into an empathy-free, not-quite-human, uncanny social valley.

And so many of us spend so much time online, checking Twitter, chatting on Facebook, that we’ve all practically built little cottages in the uncanny social valley. Hell, sometimes we spend so much time there that we begin to believe that even people we know in real life are best described as neighbors in that valley … which is how friendships fracture and communities sunder online. A lot of online outrage and fury — the majority, I’d estimate, though not all — is caused not by its targets’ inherent awfulness but by an absence, on both sides, of context, nuance, and above all, empathy and compassion.

The majority. But not all. Because this isn’t just a story of lack of compassion. This is also a story of truly, genuinely awful people doing truly, genuinely awful things. That aspect is explained by…

The Intransigent Asshole Theory

Of course the Internet was always full of awful. Assholes have been trolling since at least 1993. “Don’t read the comments” is way older than five years old. But it’s different now; the assholes are more organized, their victims are often knowingly and strategically targeted, and many seem to have calcified from assholedom into actual evil. What’s changed?

The Intransigent Asshole Theory holds that the only thing that’s changed is that more assholes are online and they’ve had more time to find each other and agglomerate into a kind of noxious movement. They aren’t that large in number. Say that a mere three percent of the online population are, actually, the evil stereotypes that we perceive so many to be.

If three of 100 people are known to be terrible human beings, the other 97 can identify them and organize to defend themselves with relative ease. 97 is well within Dunbar’s number after all. But what about 30 of a 1,000? That gets more challenging, if those thirty band together; the non-awful people have to form fairly large groups. How about 300 of 10,000? Or 3,000 of 100,000? 3 million of 100 million? Suddenly three percent doesn’t seem like such a small number after all.

I chose three percent because it’s the example used by Nassim Taleb in his essay/chapter “The Most Intolerant Wins: The Dictatorship of the Small Minority.” Adopting his argument slightly, if only 3% of the online population really wants the online world to be horrible, ultimately they can force it to be, because the other 97% can — as empirical evidence shows — live with a world in which the Internet is often basically a cesspool, whereas those 3% apparently cannot live with a world in which it is not.

Only a very small number of people comment on articles. But they are devoted to it; and, as a result, “don’t read the comments,” became a cliché. Is it really so surprising that “don’t read the comments” spread to “Facebook is for fake outrage and Twitter is for abuse,” given that Facebook and Twitter are explicitly designed to spread high-engagement items, i.e. the most outrageous ones? Really the only thing that’s surprising is that it took this long to become so widespread.

Worst of all — when you combine the Uncanny Social Valley Theory with the Intransigent Asshole Theory and the high-engagement outrage-machine algorithms, you get the situation where, even if only 3% of people actually are irredeemable assholes, a full 30% or more of them seem that way to us. And the situation spirals ever downwards.

“Wait,” you may think, “but what if they didn’t design their social networks that way?” Well, that takes us to the third argument, which isn’t a theory so much as an inarguable fact:

The Outrage Machine Money Maker

Outrage equals engagement equals profit. This is not at all new; this goes back to the ‘glory’ days of yellow journalism and “if it bleeds, it leads.” Today, though, it’s more personal; today everyone gets a customized set of screaming tabloid headlines, from which a diverse set of manipulative publishers profit.

This is explicit for YouTube, whose creators make money directly from their highest-engagement, and thus (often) most-outrageous videos, and for Macedonian teenagers creating fake news and raking in the resulting ad income. This is explicit for the politically motivated, for Russian trolls and Burmese hate groups, who get profits in the form of the confusion and mayhem they want.

This is implicit for the platforms themselves, for Facebook and Twitter and YouTube, all of whom rake in huge amounts of money. Their income and profits are, of course, inextricably connected to the “engagement” of their users. And if there are social costs — and it’s become clear that the social costs are immense — then they have to be externalized. You could hardly get a more on-the-nose example of this than YouTube deciding that Wikipedia is the solution to its social costs.

The social costs have to be externalized because human moderation simply doesn’t scale to the gargantuan amount of data we’re talking about; any algorithmic solution can and will be gamed; and the actual solution — which is to stop optimizing for ever-higher engagement — is so completely anathema to the platforms’ business models that they literally cannot conceive of it, and instead claim “we don’t know what to do.”

I have been struck repeatedly by how:– Every tech CEO acknowledges platform abuse as an extremely serious problem, and– How few practical ideas any of them have to address it in the short term

Only ~3% of people are truly terrible, but if we are sufficiently compliant with their awfulness, that’s enough to ruin the world for the rest of us. History shows that we have been more than sufficiently compliant.

Social networks often dehumanize their participants; this plus their outrage-machine engagement optimization makes fully 30% of people seem like they’re part of those 3%, which breeds rancor and even, honestly no fooling not exaggerating, genocide.

(Are those the exact numbers? Almost certainly not! My point is that social networks cause “you are an awful, irredeemable human being” to be massively overdiagnosed, by an order of magnitude or more.)

A solution is for social networks to ramp down their outrage machine, i.e. to stop optimizing for engagement.

They will not implement this solution.

Since they won’t implement this solution, then unless they somehow find another one — possible, but unlikely — our collective online milieu will just keep getting worse.

Sorry about that. Hang in there. There are still a lot of good things about social networks, after all, and it’s not like things can get much worse than they already are. Right?

…Right?

n

n

In Summaryn

n

Only ~3% of people are truly terrible, but if we are sufficiently compliant with their awfulness, that’s enough to ruin the world for the rest of us. History shows that we have been more than sufficiently compliant.n

Social networks often dehumanize their participants; this plus their outrage-machine engagement optimization makes fully 30% of people seem like they’re part of those 3%, which breeds rancor and even, honestly no fooling not exaggerating, genocide.n

(Are those the exact numbers? Almost certainly not! My point is that social networks cause “you are an awful, irredeemable human being” to be massively overdiagnosed, by an order of magnitude or more.)n

A solution is for social networks to ramp down their outrage machine, i.e. to stop optimizing for engagement.n

They will not implement this solution.n

Since they won’t implement this solution, then unless they somehow find another one — possible, but unlikelyu00a0 — our collective online milieu will just keep getting worse.n

Sorry about that. Hang in there. There are still a lot of good things about social networks, after all, and it’s not like things can get much worse than they already are. Right?n

…Right?nn

n”,”protected”:false},”excerpt”:”rendered”:”

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Enthusiasts will talk your ear off about the potential for drones to take over many of our dirtiest, dullest and most dangerous tasks. But most of the jobs we’ve actually seen drones perform are focused on the camera — from wildlife surveying to monitoring cracks on power plant smokestack.

Aerones is working on something much larger. The Y Combinator-backed startup is building giant drones with 28 motors and 16 batteries, capable of lifting up to 400 pounds. That kind of payload means the drones can actually perform a broad range of potential tasks to address the aforementioned three Ds.

The company launched two and a half years ago, led by a trio of founders that had already collaborated on a number of projects, including a GPS fleet management system and an electric race car. The team is still lean, with seven employees, most of whom are engineers. The company was bootstrapped with its founders money, but has since raised around half a million euros, all told. Founded in Latvia, Aerones has relocated to Mountain View in search of seed money, after signing on with Y Combinator.

And team already has quite a bit to show for its work, with several videos demonstrating Aerones’ robust system. The drone looks like four quadcopter tethered together — using this configuration, the craft can put out fires, perform search and rescue missions and clean the sides of tall buildings. After over a year of showing off the product’s sheer brute strength in a series of videos, the drones are ready to be put to real world use.

“Over the last two months, we’ve been very actively talking to wind turbine owners,” CEO Janis Putrams told TechCrunch on a call this week. “We have lots of interest and letters of intent in Texas, Spain, Turkey, South America for wind turbine cleaning. And in places like Canada, the Nordic and Europe for de-icing. If the weather is close to freezing, ice builds up, and they have to stop the turbine.”

For now, the company is testing the system on private property and in countries where regulatory issues don’t prohibit flight. The company plans to start monetizing their drones as part of a cleaning service, rather than selling the product outright to clients. Among other things, the deal allows Aerones to continue to develop the drone hardware and software to allow for a more robust and longer lasting system.

At present, the drones are operating with a tether that keeps them from drifting, while delivering power to the 28 on-board motors. Unplugged, the drones can carry a payload for around 12 minutes. That could be sufficient for a search and rescue mission, but the battery technology will have to improve for the system to perform other extended tasks without being connected directly to a power source.

It takes a village to grow a startup, so Village Global is offering access to a deep network of top tech execs to lure founders to its seed fund. Today, Village Global announced it’s raised $100 million for that fund that was first unveiled in September.

Village Global also announced its 90-day intensive Network Catalyst program that sees the fund get more involved in developing a startup’s product and connections. It takes 7 percent for an $120,000 investment plus admission to the program. Erik Torenberg, Product Hunt’s first employee and a founding partner of Village Global tells me that with the program “Founders get a ‘brain trust’ assembled to fit their needs and to introduce talent, customers and investors.”“I really think of Village Global as a co-founder at Keyo” says actual Keyo co-founder Kiran Bellubbi whose real estate startup we wrote about last week. “We’ve ideated, strategized and built this business from the ground up together in under 3 months. Couldn’t have done it without this team. The pace of play is astonishing.”

Most venture funds today have a slew of general partners searching for and leading deals. A few have expansive service arms like Andreessen Horowitz’s recruiting program or GV’s design assistance. But Village Global’s approach is to have just a few partners but a ton of scouts that earn a portion of the returns if they bring in a great startup. These “network leaders” include Quora vice president Sarah Smith and YouTube’s VR lead Erin Teague. Rather than connect them to more tangible services, portfolio companies get access to Village Global’s deep mentor bench.

Other big funds have their own scout programs too that Village Global will have to compete with. The Wall Street Journal reported that Accel Partners, Founders Fund, Index Ventures, Lightspeed Venture Partners, Social Capital and Sequoia are among the top tier funds that use scouts to sniff out early stage deals. Others like First Round’s Dorm Room Fund and General Catalyst’s Rough Draft Ventures use student ambassadors on university campuses to identify high potential college startups.

The question is whether letting younger, less experienced scouts right checkbooks is good for their funds or their own track records, and whether these scouts are shirking responsibilities from their own companies. But for founders, it means there are more people with their ears to the street who aren’t already famous finance big-shots. That could promote more meritocracy in an industry known for talking a lot about it despite tons of privilege given to founders of certain complexions or pedigrees.

With increased competition in the seed stage, funds can’t wait for founders to come to them any more.

Blue Apron announced today it will bring its meal kits to stores. The news arrives at a time when the meal kit subscription company is struggling to grow and retain its users, who are often put off by the expense of the direct-shipped meal kits and the need to commit to an ongoing subscription. In recent months, Blue Apron has also laid off hundreds, lost its CEO, and has continued to post disappointing earnings.

In February, the company reported its subscriber base had fallen to 746,000, down from 856,000 the prior quarter, and down from its peak of one million last year.

That means Blue Apron, which has already ceded some portion of its users to rival services like HelloFresh, the second-biggest meal kit company in the U.S., is now not only facing threats from competitors with similar offerings, but has to take on a plethora of meal kit alternatives sold in stores and from the two largest retailers, Amazon and Walmart. And many competitors’ kits would cost less and not require ongoing subscription payments.

In an emailed statement, a Blue Apron spokesperson says the new in-store meal kit offering will make its brand “more accessible to homes across the country,” and “will provide the unique and consistent product experience that our customers have come to know and expect from us, including high-quality ingredients and chef-driven recipes.”

The in-store kits could also serve as a user acquisition strategy for Blue Apron’s subscription business, as they’d offer consumers a way to sample the recipes ahead of signing up for shipments.

The company didn’t say which grocery stores would sell its kits, but did say that some of the retailers it’s talking to already sell their own kits, according to The WSJ’s interview with new CEO Brad Dickerson. Blue Apron also didn’t say what the in-store kits would cost, but noted it expects them to arrive on shelves before year-end.

Meal kits aren’t the only way Blue Apron is attempting to grow its business in the wake of increased competition. It also in January began selling a Whole30 meal plan, focused on wholesome foods that align with partner Whole30’s nutrition guidelines. And it launched Mediterranean Diet recipes to cater to those looking for other ways of healthy eating.

Blue Apron’s stock is up 8 percent on the news, as the time of writing.

Glasses have been en vogue for several years and with celebrities donning them on the Oscar’s red carpet, it doesn’t seem like the trend is about to fade away.

One company that’s benefitted from and also contributed to the glasses craze is Warby Parker, which is getting another $75 million, led by T. Rowe Price, to grow its business. The news was first reported by Cheddar.

TechCrunch’s upcoming TC Sessions: Robotics is fast taking shape. The single-day event, held on May 11, will focus of the crossroads of the latest AI and robotics technology and the startup ecosystem. We’re really pleased to announce two sessions for the show — as well as throw open the application for an early-stage robotics startup pitch competition.

Robotics and Deep Learning

Pieter Abbeel is a professor at UC Berkeley (EECS, BAIR) and co-founder of Embodied Intelligence, which is applying advances in deep imitation and deep reinforcement learning to train robots for new assignments.

Abbeel’s lab has pioneered deep learning for robotics, including learning locomotion and visuomotor skills. His lab enabled the first end-to-end completion of reliably picking up a crumpled laundry article and folding it. During his PhD, he developed “apprenticeship” learning algorithms to advanced helicopter aerobatics, including maneuvers such as tic-tocs, chaos and auto-rotation, which only exceptional human pilots can perform.

TechCrunch’s editors will talk with Professor Abbeel about the impact of the latest deep learning technology on the advancement of robotics as well as his plans for Embodied Intelligence.

Abbeel earned his PhD at Stanford University in computer science.

Venture Capital and Robotics

Long a quiet category for venture capitalists, robotics is attracting more venture investment thanks to dramatic advances in sensors, GPUs, artificial intelligence and materials technology. We’re pleased to announce that three experienced investors in robotics will join us on stage to discuss what VCs are looking for in robotics startups.

Chrissy Meyer recently joined Root Ventures after spending a decade developing and shipping hardware, primarily at Apple and Square. Prior to Root, she was a founding team member at Pearl Automation, a vehicle technology startup. Meyer has managed projects that shipped tens of millions of units. She has an MS in Electrical Engineering from Stanford, and a BSEE from the Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology. Root’s previous investments include Momentum Machines (robotics for the food industry), Tortuga AgTech (harvesting produce), and Superflex (integrating clothing & robotics).

Renata Quintini is a partner at Lux Capital, where she focuses on founding teams that are transforming health, food and longevity. Prior to joining Lux Capital, Renata was a partner at Felicis Ventures, where she worked with Planet and Cruise Automation, among others. Lux Capital’s robotics investments include Auris (surgical robots), Zoox (autonomous transportation), Saildrone (autonomous sailing drones), Veo (Safer co-bots for manufacturing), and CyPhy (unmanned aerial vehicles). Quintini earned LLM and MBA degrees from Stanford.

Rob Coneybeer is managing director at Shasta Ventures focuses on investing in emerging platforms – Robotics, Space, the Connected Home and AR/VR. His investments include Nest (IoT), Fetch Robotics (industrial robots), and Vector Space Systems (satellite services). Earlier in his career, Rob served as a lead integration engineer in the Astro Space division of Martin Marietta, where he helped build the first EchoStar spacecraft. Rob earned an MS degree in mechanical engineering from the Georgia Institute of Technology and a BS degree in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Virginia. He also holds an MBA degree from the Wharton School.

Robotics Pitch-off

TechCrunch loves startup pitch offs, and we’re looking for a four early stage startups that would like to take the stage to wow our judges (all notable VCs) and the audience with cool robots. There’s no prize just lots of attention from a big crowd live and online and a fleeting moment of glory for the winner. Apply here if you are interested.

Apple SVP of Internet Software and Services Eddie Cue appeared on stage at SXSW on Monday, and discussed a range of topics, including their just-announced acquisition of magazine app Texture. Cue also made some comments regarding Apple’s recent moves in original video content, where it’s been acquiring a number of TV series from high-profile creators.

Cue said that Apple’s historical pattern has not been to buy up big companies, like Netflix and Disney, in response to a question about those media giants as potential acquisition targets, per Cheddar’s Alex Heath on Twitter. Instead, Cue noted that Apple does believe a shift is coming regarding how people get their media content, and noted that it’s being strategic and picky about its content buying.

“We’re not after quantity, we’re after quality,” Cue reportedly said. Even so, the company has acquired the rights to around a dozen new shows thus far, and also renewed its existing ‘Carpool Karaoke’ series based on James Corden’s Late Late Show segment.

Cue admitted that Apple is now “making big investments” financially speaking in original content, adding that spending cash “isn’t an issue” for the tech company, which is sitting on one of the largest available cash piles of any company in the world. He added that around 40 people are now dedicatee to building out its Apple TV content business.

The Apple exec drew comparisons between the company’s approach to content and Pixar’s, meaning it has a focus on quality storytelling, and also suggested there will be some “surprises” in store for how the programming is viewed once available. He also added that it’s not going to focus on acquiring sports streaming rights in the near-term, at least, and suggested that its original content ambitions face fewer hurdles than those from rivals including Facebook and Google because it’s not also an advertising-based business.

Apple has a lot of content coming down the pipeline, but it doesn’t sound like the company is interested in a spray-and-pray approach, which seems to be where Netflix’s original programming is heading lately.

The Midwest is back! At least, that’s the conclusion from a group of venture capitalists who went on a multi-day bus tour through the region recently. As Kevin Roose wrote in the New York Times this week, “The trip, which took place on a luxury bus outfitted with a supply of vegan doughnuts and coal-infused kombucha, was known as the ‘Comeback Cities Tour.’”

Roose writes in a sly tongue-in-cheek fashion, and for good reason: the whole trip is and was an obnoxious affectation of coastal elites gawking at poverty in America’s heartland. VCs were beside themselves at what they were seeing according to Roose. “This is nicer than San Francisco” said Robin Li of GGV Capital, looking at a co-working space in downtown Detroit. “If it weren’t for my kids, I’d totally move,” said Cyan Bannister of Founders Fund.

I call this an obnoxious affectation, because there is this blissful stereotype of California as an economic nirvana and the Midwest as some sort of deindustrialized death trap. Unsurprisingly, that stereotype panned out given where the Comeback Cities Tour actually visited: Youngstown, Akron, Detroit, Flint, and South Bend, Indiana. This isn’t a tour of the Midwest so much as poverty tourism.

VCs don’t need to wait in the Centurion Lounge at SFO in order to catch a glimpse at crushing poverty — all they have to do is look in front of their homes in San Francisco to see the homelessness and deprivation, or maybe travel just a few minutes east to cities like Stockton, Vallejo, and Richmond, which are teetering on bankruptcy (or in the case of Stockton, has actually gone bankrupt).

The Midwest certainly has deindustrialized, and some of the most troubled cities in the country are located there. However, the Midwest is also home to some of the most robust economies as well. Take one choice statistic — the unemployment rate — and look at the Midwest. One thing that becomes obvious is that the Midwest is heavily represented in the cities with the lowest unemployment rate — Ames, Iowa is leading the entire country with a rate of 1.5%, compared to 3.9% nationwide. Madison, Wisconsin comes in at fifth with 1.9%, and other cities show comparable performance.

The Comeback Cities tour could have focused on the success stories — the cities that are actually building thriving innovation economies. It could have stopped in places like Minneapolis and Rochester, Minnesota, which together have a world-leading biotech cluster. It could have stopped in Chicago, a global city with a multitude of startup unicorns to its name. It could have stopped in Indianapolis or Pittsburgh or Ann Arbor, each of which have notable innovation clusters.

Additional VC dollars in any of those markets would have an outsized and extraordinary impact in accelerating the growth of those startup ecosystems. But no, the VCs on this trip didn’t focus on cultivating the winners (which ironically, is what VCs literally do in their jobs every single day). Instead, they traveled to cities that can’t even supply tap water without killing people in some sort of messianic belief that they are going to Solve It With Tech. Flint doesn’t need a startup accelerator: it needs basic first-world utilities and a functioning government.

I know some of the people who went on this tour personally. I know that everyone involved has their heart in the right place, and I am not questioning anyone’s motives here. I do believe that everyone involved is legitimately looking for new startup opportunities and increasingly frustrated with San Francisco’s insular culture.

But let’s not fool ourselves into believing that a WeWork and a local seed fund is suddenly going to turn cities down on their luck around. Unlike a factory, a WeWork doesn’t produce anything — the people located inside that WeWork create things. The challenge with innovation work is that it requires the most investment in human and urban capital. Building innovative talent requires decades of education and training, and a robust knowledge-producing infrastructure including universities, research centers, accelerators, incubators, think tanks, and more.

My fear is that with all things in American politics today, there is this political desire for the quick fix. Detroit can be solved with some startup funding, and we don’t need to worry about crumbling schools or endemic government corruption. We don’t need to fund K-12 schools or universities, we’ve got VCs knocking on our door! And nothing could be further from the truth.

I was born in Youngstown, but grew up predominantly near Minneapolis. My immediate family lives outside Detroit, and my extended family lives outside Akron. I am acutely aware of the challenges that the region faces, but also the opportunities that it can afford people. My simple plea is to focus on what works. Focus on the cities that are thriving and help them reach ever higher echelons of growth. Help more people to migrate to those epicenters of excellence so they can participate in that growth and share in the prosperity. The Midwest doesn’t need to be discovered — it’s already here, and it just needs to be cultivated.

In a way, Essential is something of a pioneer. Before the iPhone X helped the world reluctantly embrace the screen notch, the company proudly displayed one atop its first flagship. Since then, of course, it’s become a feature, not a bug, with a long list of companies rushing to embrace it on their latest flagship.

But Essential’s clearly hoping to solve the issue with a number of patents looking to stick a camera directly behind the display. The Andy Rubin-founded company has been on quite a patent run in recent months — but the ones pertaining to a “camera integrated into a display” are the most compelling of the lot. And if it comes to fruition, it could breathe new life into the company’s upcoming handsets after an admittedly slow start.

The patent describes a multi-layered display with camera in which a “substantially transparent region allows light from outside to reach the camera to record an image.” The patent points to a potential application in which the camera is mounted behind the LCD.

In the imagery accompanying the post, the camera is positioned in its customary spot up top — you know, where the notch should be. In another iteration of the same idea, the camera is located behind the screen’s color layer and “records the light from the outside colored by the color filter layer.”

A separate patent has “an irregularly shaped electronic display, including a hollowed out display within which a sensor, such as a camera, can be placed. The manufacturing techniques enable the creation of the hollow anytime during the manufacturing process. The resulting electronic display occupies the full side of the mobile device, with the sensors placed within and surrounded by the display.”

Both patents include a fun little addition, wherein the camera is located behind a camera icon. Tapping the icon would activate the icon. Of course, depending on how all of this is implemented, you probably don’t want to put a camera in a spot that is going to accumulate a substantial amount of your disgusting finger grease.

“The integrated camera serves two purposes: to record pictures,” the patent reads, “and to act as a camera icon, that when selected activates the camera. By removing the camera from the front side of the mobile device, or by integrating the camera into the display screen of the mobile device, the size of the mobile device display screen can be increased.”

Of course, the standard patent disclaimers apply here — there’s no guarantee the company plans to (or is even able to) implement the technologies outlined in these forms. Such patents are often pie in the sky ideas or just IP grabs. We reached out to Essential and the company declined to comment any further on the patents.